


Omnes feriunt, ultima necat (or, the five deaths of Light Yagami)

by DanzaNelFuoco



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, Shinigami, blink and you'll miss the smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23379967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanzaNelFuoco/pseuds/DanzaNelFuoco
Summary: Maybe he dies the second his fingers close around the spine of the Death Note, maybe he dies the first time he writes a name. Maybe he dies a little more every time he takes a pen in his hand and smiles at it.In the end, Light is dead anyway.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 3
Kudos: 71
Collections: COWT - Clash Of the Writing Titans/Chronicles Of Words and Trials





	Omnes feriunt, ultima necat (or, the five deaths of Light Yagami)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the COW-T# 10 (week7, mission5)  
> Prompt: Dead! - My chemical romance

_And if your heart stops beating_

_I'll be here wondering_

_Did you get what you deserve?_

_The ending of your life_

The first time Light dies the weather is nice. That or he would have never seen a black note falling from the sky, the rain would have been too thick or he would have thought it ruined and would have never picked it up.

So if one should put the blame of his first death on something, may as well be the weather.

Light is doomed the second he sees it and it picks his curiosity. He doesn’t realize it yet, but it’s a seed implanted, slightly eroding his way through his brain. He can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop wondering why on Earth someone would throw a note out of a window, can’t stop thinking about going out to retrieve it, which is stupid, he knows, because surely the owner would have already taken it back.

But when the bell rings he goes out anyway and, incredibly, the note is still there. Maybe he dies the second his fingers close around the spine of the Death Note, maybe he dies the first time he writes a name.

Maybe he dies a little more every time he takes a pen in his hand and smiles at it.

In the end, Light is dead anyway.

\- - -

The second time Light dies is not as dignified as the first.

The first time he had been slain on the altar of justice - twisted and thwarted as that justice was - in a white tunic fitting for a sacrificial lamb.

This time Light doesn’t even remember what justice is - or what’s his name for the matter.

Light is just a whimpering mess, moaning and gripping L shoulders so hard he leaves red half-moons on the detective’s milk-white skin.

The chain at their wrists rattles at every thrust.

L kisses his neck and Light cries again - no, not dignified at all, but deaths seldom are. Even deaths of this kind.

L laps and bites his skin, tasting the salt of sweat on his tongue - always the oral fixation - and feeling Light’s accelerate pulse under his mouth, every time he pushes into him and Light jerks back in reply.

A synchronized movement that makes L wonder what would have happened in another life - one where the amazing and intelligent boy that’s under him with an expression so wild and trustworthy, could be his partner for life, instead of a serial killer.

An exercise on futility, of course, but L gives himself a moment to dwell on it nonetheless. 

Light, of course, memories of being Kira completely forgotten, doesn’t think at all.

 _La petite mort_ , the little death, or so they call it.

And Light dies a lot in those days.

\- - -

The third time it could have been avoided.

Isn’t L the most intelligent person on Earth?

Maybe not, because he gives the Death Note to Light, and it takes him a fraction of a second to regret it, but a fraction of a second is too late.

Light’s scream fills the little cubicle of the helicopter.

It’s a scream full of horror, yes, the shinigami, the supernatural beast in front of them, is hideous and shatters the fundaments of life as we know it, challenging and answering every philosophical and scientific dogma and belief one could have.

But L senses there’s more to it. That horror is personal, too personal.

Besides, horror is not the only thing that’s in that scream.

There’s pain.

The howling sound of a dying animal.

Pain and grief.

Grief.

Somehow, without evidence, just relying on mere instinct, L thinks he should be mourning too.

\- - -

The fourth time Light didn’t think it would happen.

The fourth time Light didn’t know there was something else to kill.

There’s a smile that tries to tug at his lips as he looks down at the body of his nemesis, of the man that dared to oppose him. And look at him, now. All pale skeletal limbs, dark circles under his eyes,all evidence of how much of himself he was pouring in the case, of how much endeavor he had to endure just to end up dead anyway because Kira is a God. Kira is unstoppable.

Light holds L's body, limp in his arms, lifeless.

He has won.

He bites his lower lip and closes his eyes to gather some impassability - it wouldn’t do to have killed L and then be captured because he was gloating over his corpse.

“I - I’m so sorry,” Matsuda puts a hand on his shoulder, and why would he ever be doing such a thing?

Light rises his head to meet his eyes and almost jolts away from his touch. 

He knows.

Light doesn’t know how he knows, but somehow Matsuda the idiot, Matsuda whose wit was as helping as ice in the North Pole, that Matsuda has figured out that Light and L were… Light doesn’t even know what they were, surely not something that could be described with just one word -friends, enemies, boyfriends, strangers, lovers, haters, partners. Nothing really fits.

And yet, in his simplicity, in his assumption two minds like theirs could be put under the same label other common and ordinary man used, in that reduction Matsuda had understood better than Light and L would ever do.

Matsuda closes his eyes and breaths deeply, pushing back the pain, trying to recollect himself, then hands him a handkerchief.

Light looks at him a little lost and that’s when he feels it. The dampness on his cheeks.

Tears.

Light wonders how long they’ve been there.

\- - -

The fifth is the last because there are only so many times a man can die.

It’s a day like any other, after L’s death there isn’t really anything to do, no challenges, no enemies. Just Kira and his justice - name upon name, black ink on white paper - and a mild pretense of doing something to catch himself, not even an act that committed, since there is no one else to distrust him and scrutinize him.

The task force is, all in all, just a joke. Not even that funny, if the truth must be told.

He has brought a blank page from the Ryuk’s Death Note in the headquarters, put it into one of his other block notes and written criminal names right under the nose of his father and what little of the task force had survived and no one even spared him a glance.

Fools, they were just fools.

After that adrenaline peak, receded too soon and with too little gratification, Light just goes on with his life.

Day after day of boredom.

“I had fun with you, you know?” Ryuk shrugs, eating an apple, “but this is just becoming repetitive.”

“Desk work usually is.”

“Maybe I should just kill you and hand the Death Note to another human.”

“Maybe,” Kira concedes. “But don’t you wanna see the final picture? Aren’t you willing to endure a little more boredom to see how amazing the results will be?”

“Perhaps,” Ryuk eats the last chunk of the apple core. “After all, contrary to my patience, my life is eternal.”

So Kira keeps writing, and Ryuk keeps waiting and they both keep being bored as days pass, every one identical to the previous.

Except for the day when Light dies for the fifth time because Ryuk suddenly bursts in a laugher. He’s grinning and hiccuping and holding his belly as he howls his laugher, and Light has never heard him that amused, not even when Naomi Misora gave him a false name.

They are at the headquarters so Light can’t exactly ask him what’s wrong with him - police are stupid, but not _that_ stupid, if he starts talking with thin air they will realize - so Ryuk keeps laughing and laughing as if he’s having the time of his life, which is weird because there’s nothing funny in the room, nothing of significance has happened, no leads, no copycat, no new detectives spawned by who know where. Nothing.

Nothing that Light can see, at least.

“Hyuk, hyuk!” Ryuk laughs, “let him know! It will be so much funnier that way!”

Light clicks his lips, suppressing the shiver that’s running down his spine.

There’s something wrong, something he can’t put his hands on, he can’t even ask Ryuk directly, andthe bastard just wouldn’t stop laughing and start explaining.

Then he feels the tap.

It’s light against his forehead, the sensation of the corner of a note pressed against his hair.

Light shoots up to his feet, knocking down the chair.

His colleagues look at him as if he had grown a second head, slightly worried. His father has already a hand on his gun as if he could shoot to a shinigami.

Light ignores them, transfixed.“L…”

The shinigami takes his chin in his hand, cold boney fingers grasping his skin, and tilts his head up to meet his hollows black eyes.

“You can call me Law, now.”

Light closes his eyes, overwhelmed.

“Call me, Law, Light Yagami. And tell me you’re Kira.”

“You don’t need to hear it. You already know.”

“I want them to know too. Do it or I’ll force you to.”

“I won’t.”

“Are you abjuring?”

“Never.”

“Then tell me, Light.”

“Everything I’ve done, it has been for justice, _Law_. Write my name in your Death Note if you must and have me do what you want before I die. ”

“Light!” His father is the first to realize what’s happening - and really what else do they need, a written explanation?

“What is -?”

He stops them with a hand, looking pointedly at… well, at nothing, at least for them.

“Ryuk?” L - _Law_ \- chuckles. “Would you mind?”

Light just notices Ryuk has a piece of paper in his hand and he can’t even say anything to stop him, because he would give himself away. So Ryuk just presses a sheet of paper on Soichiro Yagami’s cheek and Law became visible to him, then to Mogi and Matsuda and every other man in the room.

Light can’t take his eyes off Law, though, so he doesn’t see the realization and the shock in their expressions.

It’s like they’re the only beings in the room.

Law’s face is so close to his, he can notice the details, his skull under the ash pale skin of his face, his hollow eye sockets, dark as black holes, his sweet breath, smelling of cheesecake and decomposition.

“Tell me, Light, if, in the end, you won’t admit what you claim you are so proud of… are you really that proud of what you did?”

Light presses his lips tight.

“Ryuzaki…” Matsuda starts to plead, because they are all in the same team, all trying to capture Kira.

“Are you daft?” Light growls, “What is it that you don’t understand? This is between him and me.”

Matsuda physically takes a step back, as if he had been slapped.

“Do you really believe this won’t end with your death?” Law asks, tilting his head.

“No. I think I made my peace with the world I’m leaving.”

“Light!” his father, again. Yes, of course, he wouldn’t want his son to die. But still, there’s nothing he can do about it. Nothing, to stop a shinigami.

“When I started this, I knew I could die at any moment, Dad. You even pointed a gun at my head and shoot. I knew what I was facing. I knew I could end up sentenced to death.”

Law chuckles.

“Yes, you want to hear it. I’m gonna say it. With Kira criminality has dropped. With Kira, you can walk the street without fearing to be robbed, raped or killed. Yes, some innocent people have died, but on the scale, more innocent people would have died if Kira hadn’t killed the perpetrators. Statistics show that. The criminality rate has dropped.”

“And when Kira won’t be there to punish the criminal? What about the backslash?” Law inquires.

Light grins, “But that, I’m afraid, would be your fault, not Kira’s.”

“How so?”

“When a king died without heirs and there was a civil war, was it the king’s fault for having died, or the pretenders’ for not sorting it out pacifically?”

“I do see your point. But what appointed you to be king?”

“What appoints every king. Power.”

Law looks at him, considering, his thumb driven to his mouth, a habit not lost even in death.

“I see. I must admit, I appreciate your schemes more, now that I’m dead.”

“I thought so. Death tends to change perception.”

“Ah, yes. Always the smart one. I almost feel sorry for having to kill you, now.”

“But you are gonna do it nonetheless.”

“I said _almost_.”

“Yes, I too almost felt sorry for killing you.” 

“Light…” Soichiro pleads. This must be a misunderstanding. His son must be… confused. He can’t be talking about being Kira with such nonchalance, admitting it as if it was no big deal, chatting with a shinigami as if it was an everyday occurrence. “Light, please, what are you even -?”

“It’s done,” Light shakes his head. “Can’t you realize, dad? It was always meant to be like this.”

“What!”

“I am Kira and the only thing that can stop me is what made me. No human ever could, not the police, not the FBI, not L.”

“But from shinigami power you were born and of shinigami power you shall perish,” Law nods. 

“I’d appreciate if you made it quick.”

“You are already dying, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t have been so cooperative and resigned otherwise.”

“You didn’t force me to confess,” Light states, sure of himself.Whatever went out of his mouth it was him, all him.

“No, I didn’t.”

Law - L - shows him a white sheet, holding it just from the upper corners.

_Light Yagami10:40_

_Dies of a heart attack after having some closure with the world he’s leaving._

“No, you didn’t,” Light smiles, at the absurdity of the scene, at the fondness he feels for Ryuzakiquirks held even in the afterlife, at the throbbing of his heart in his chest. “How kind of you.”

It’s just a spasm, he thinks he should feel more pain then he actually does, but there’s just this burning in his chest, this twinge irradiating to his arms and his jaw and then there’s nothing more.

Law closes his eyes. “After all, you really were my first friend ever.”

_And if you get to heaven_

_I'll be here waiting_

“Shall I call you Kira, now?”

The newborn shinigami taps a finger - blood-red and ink-black stains on the ash-grey skin of his hands - against his chin, considering.

“No. I don’t think that’s my name, Law.”

“What then?”

“I think I’ll go for Moon, this time.”


End file.
